Chapter 6: Analyzing and Interpreting Poetry Flashcards
Poetic Forms
Epic Ode Ballad Villanelle Haiku Tanka Petrarchan Sonnet Shakespearean Sonnet Elegy
Epic
Structural Elements:
1) Long narrative poem
2) Heroes are presented and heroic deeds evidenced.
3) Heroic deeds are significant to a given culture
Examples: Odyssey Iliad Beowulf Epic of Gilgamesh El Cid
Ode
Structural Elements:
1)Lyrical verse
2) A classic ode structured in three major parts:
the strophe, the antistrophe, and the epode.
3) English odes are usually tributes to something or someone who caught the poet’s attention.
Examples:
Ode to the West Wind (Shelley)
Ode on a Grecian Urn (Keats)
Ballad
Structural Elements:
1) Narrative Poetry
2) Usually set to music, tells a story about a ‘big event’
3) Describes actions; may include dialogue
4) Form is particularly popular in British and Irish Poetry.
5) Form grew during the medieval period.
Examples:
Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Coleridge)
Barrack Room Ballas (Kipling)
Villanelle
Structural Elements:
1) French verse form
2) Modeled after lyrical form used by medieval troubadours
3) Fixed form: 19 lines long, consisting of 5 tercets and 1 concluding quatrain
Examples:
Do Not Go Gently into That Good Night (Dylan Thomas)
The House on the Hill (E.A. Robinson)
One Art
(Elizabeth Bishop)
Haiku
Structural Elements:
1) Japanese poetic form
2) Three unrhymed lines of 17 syllables in the following pattern: 5, 7, 5
Examples:
Basho and Issa are two of the most highly regarded haiku masters.
Tanka
Structural Elements:
1) Japanese poetic form
2) Consists of five unrhymed lines
3) The syllabic count for each line is 5-7-5-7-7.
Example: Tanka by Okura: What are they to me, Silver, or gold, or jewels? How could they ever Equal the greater treasure That is a child? They can not.
Petrarchan Sonnet
Structural Elements:
1) Referred to as an Italian Sonnet
2) First developed by Francesco Petrarch
3) the 14-line poem is often dedicated to a lady or unrequited love. The poem is divided into an octave (8 lines) and a sestet (6 lines).
4) The octave usually poses a problem or question, and the sestet often provides a solution or answer.
5) The transition between the octave and the sestet is referred to as the “volta” or turn.
Example:
Sir Thomas Wyatt
Farewell, Love:
FarewEll, Love, and all thy laws ever:
Thy baited hooks shall tangle me no more.
Seneca and Plato call me from thy lore,
To perfect wealth my wit for to endeavour.
In blind error when I did perseverE,
Thy sharp repulse, that pricketh aye so sore,
Hath taught me to set in trifles no store,
And scape forth, since liberty is lever.
Therefore farewell, go trouble younger hearts,
And in me claim no more authority:
With idle youth go use thy property;
And thereon spend thy many brittle darts.
For, hitherto though I’ve lost my time,
Me lusteth no longer rotten boughs to climb.
Shakespearean Sonnet
Structural Elements:
1) English poetic form attributed to William Shakespeare
2) Consists of three 4-line stanzas (quatrains) and one concluding couplet - often a commentary on the preceding quatrains and an epigrammatic close.
3) Themes include love, time, beauty, and mortality.
4) These poems are usually written in iambic pentameter.
5) Usual rhyme scheme: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG
Example:
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29:
When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes
I al all alone between my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur’d like him, like him with friends possess’d,
Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, - and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
Elegy
Structural Elements:
1) Sustained and formal poem setting forth the poet’s meditations upon death or another solemn theme, often occasioned by the death of a particular person.
Example:
Wiliam Cullen
Bryant’s Thanatopsis (1817)
Percy Byshe Shelley’s
Adonais (1821)
Poetic Devices
Imagery Symbolism Allusion Paradox Irony
Imagery
Descriptive language that evokes a sensory experience
Ex: Byron’s poem and central image, “She Walks in Beauty Like the Night”
Symbolism
Use of a person, object, event, action, or image to represent an idea.
Ex:
Hawthorn’es “The Scarlet Letter” contains important symbols that develop the themes of the novel. The scarlet A in the novel has important symbolic meanings.
Allusion
A figure of speech that makes use of a reference to a historical or literary figure, event, or object.
Ex:
Alexander Pope’s “The Rape of the Locke” has many allusions.
Paradox
A statement, which while seemingly contradictory or absurd, may actually be well founded or true.
Ex:
A famous paradox in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” is Polonius’ observation that “though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.”
Irony Definition and Types
A feeling, tone, mood, or attitude arising from an awareness that what is (reality) is opposite from, and usually worse than, what seems (appearance).
Forms:
Dramatic Irony
Verbal Irony
Situational Irony
Dramatic Irony
The discrepancy between what a character knows or means and what a areader or audience knows.
Ex: Jhumpa Lahira’s “Interpreter of Maladies” one the readers learn of Mr. Kapais’s hope for a relationship with Mrs. Das, his actions take on a different meaning for the reader than for her.
Verbal Irony
When a a speaker says one thing bbut means another.
Ex:
Consider the conversation between Jack and Algernon in Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest.”
Jack (pulling off his gloves): When one is in town one amuses oneself. When oneis in the country one amuses other people. It is excessively boring.
Algernon: And who are the people you amuse?
Jack (airily): Oh, neighbors, neighbors.
Algernon: Got ice neighbors in your part of Shropshire?
Jack: Perfectly horrid! Never speak to one of them.
Algernon: How immensely you must amuse them!
Situational Irony
A pointed discrepancy between what seems fitting or expected in a story and what actually happens.
Ex:
In Flannery O’Conner’s “Good Country People” it shows situational irony when the Bible salesman - expressing the hollow nature of Hulga’s soul - surprises the reader when he steals her artificial leg leaving Hulga stranded alone having to deal with her belief in nothing.
